Audio provided by FOP President Dan Hils of a conversation with Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black. Hils said he felt intimidated by Black's comments that he would ask federal investigators to look into a Temporary Restraining Order.
Courtesy Dan Hils. Edited by Phil Didion.

In more harmonious times, in early 2016, the leadership of the Cincinnati FOP and The Sentinels Police Association pledged to work together. The vow has shattered. The Sentinels, led by Officer Eddie Hawkins, left, are part of a group of organizations calling for the department and city government to discipline FOP President Dan Hils. Also shown are FOP first vice president Officer Don Meece, Hils and Sentinels’ vice president Det. Marcus McNeil.(Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)

The Cincinnati NAACP and other local civil rights groups are calling on the city of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Police Department to "discipline" the department's union president in a detailed resolution obtained by The Enquirer late Thursday.

Sgt. Dan Hils, leader of Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police union for two years, has come under a steady stream of criticism by the department's African-American police association and civil rights groups for several weeks.

"We ask that corrective disciplinary action be taken and that clear policy and protocols be put in place when union officials make visits to the workplace for purposes of representation, and that Dan Hils receive implicit bias training that meets the requirements mutually agreed to by the City of Cincinnati and parties to this resolution," reads the statement jointly made by the groups, which include the city's Office of Human Relations, Black United Front, Sentinels Police Association and Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio.

Hils responded in a post on Facebook: "The narrative being manufactured that I am divisive is baseless and in itself is facilitating divisiveness in our community."

She was third-shift commander in District 4, which covers Avondale, Bond Hill and other predominantly black neighborhoods. Pettis has since been transferred to District 3, she confirmed Thursday. It covers parts of 10 neighborhoods, including the Price Hills and Westwood.

In a complaint to Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac, Pettis alleged that Hils undermined her authority by speaking to the third-shift roll call she supervised when she wasn't there Nov. 26. A witness statement was submitted by another officer.

Hils said in his post in the Support The Blue in Cincy Facebook group that he wouldn't respond to specific allegations about the Pettis incident because of the ongoing investigation but predicted that a "significant portion" of them would be proved false.

The civil rights groups' 11-point resolution also includes objections to delaying an investigation into accusations that officers used excessive force against two African-American men in a confrontation last August.

Hils denied in the post that the delay was meant to undermine the process.

The groups' statement also follows a no-confidence vote in Hils taken last month by the African-American police association, the Sentinels.